DR. WEEKS’ COMMENT: with all the talk abotu health care reform and single payer issues, the real issue health care itself is ignored. Our tax dollars subsidize (agaist free market principles) various industries including the business of feeding people. Since corrective nutrition is critical to the restablishment of health, it is irresponsible to fund the very activities which create illness on the one hand and give free health care on the other.
Here is an example: the diary industry, long the recipient of government subsidies, creates a product which the public increasingly avoids (unless frozed with sugar added – ice cream) and which creates many illnesses including the topic of this article: asthma.
Let’s be sensible people and clean up our food sources (go organic and non GMO) and select wisely (avoid dairy, eat less refined carbohydrates), drink good quality water and stop all high-fructose corn syrup). Then let’s talk about how to fund the treatment of whatever illness remains.
NYC Asthma Stench
There was a small article on page 24 of the
Sunday New York Daily News (June 14, 2009)
which headline captured my attention:
“Asthma is 10 Times Worse for City’s Poor”
The article pointed out:
“The starkest disparity is between East Harlem
and the Upper East Side, just a few blocks to
the south, according to the study by City
Councilman Eric Gioia (D-Queens).”
The study reveals that the per capita income of
those living on the Upper East Side is $77,000,
while the per capita income of those living in
East Harlem is $23,000, yet, nearly ten times
as many people in the East Harlem neighborhood
end up in hospital emergency rooms with
life-threatening asthma attacks as do people
living on the Upper East Side.
Gioia’s solution is to spend millions of dollars
re-construction “ventilation in schools near
busy roads.”
New York does not need to improve the air, but
it certainly does need to clear the air.
I recall a similar story in the New York Times
(4/19/03) in which it was revealed that one out
of four children in Harlem tests positive for asthma.
America’s national average asthma rate runs about
six percent, or nearly one child out of seventeen.
Scientists tested 2000 children under the age of 13 living
in one 24-block New York City Harlem neighborhood and found
that 25.5% of the kids had asthma. The researchers are
clueless as to the cause, but have observed that the asthma
rate has doubled since 1980.
For many children, living in Harlem means living below the
poverty level. USDA runs an anti-nutrition program called
WIC (Women/Infants/
giveaway program is subsidized milk and dairy products,
purchased at retail to bail out failing dairy farmers who
have no other outlet for their surplus product.
Our government also feeds 28 million school kids each day
with their National School Lunch Program and School
Breakfast Program (SBP). Those milk meal giveaways cost over
6 billion dollars per year, which does not include the cost
of medical treatment for asthma attacks and asthma medicine.
In attempting to explain exploding asthma rates, the New
York Times article reported:
“East Harlem and the South Bronx also have a heavy
concentration of diesel bus and truck traffic, and the
tiny particles in diesel exhaust are thought to be
another serious asthma trigger.”
Environmental considerations are all very important, of
course, and everybody wants more than one breath of fresh
air each day, but not one of the factors cited by the Times
has doubled since 1980. One factor, though, not considered
by researchers, has more than tripled. In 1980, the average
American was eating just ten pounds of cheese per year.
Today, the average American consumes thirty-one pounds of
cheese.
Eighty percent of milk and cheese protein is casein. When
casein is isolated from milk, it becomes the glue to adhere
a label to a bottle of beer. Casein is the glue used to hold
together wood in furniture. When a child living in Harlem
eats cheese or ice cream, this allergy-causing milk protein
triggers the production of histamines, which in turn create
mucus. Sometimes, the reaction takes as long as 12 hours.
Tonight’s slice of pizza may trigger tomorrow’s asthma
attack.
Asthma is not the only result. Milk hormones interfere with
a child’s ability to learn. It is a wonder that only one out
of four kids living in poverty have asthma. Perhaps the
other three are fortunate enough to be severely lactose
intolerant, and avoid complimentary bovine secretions like
the plague.
Ninety-five percent of African-Americans cannot tolerate
lactose. Pizza and ice cream taste delicious on the way into
their bodies. Lactose is a sugar and most people need the
enzyme lactase to break down lactose into glucose and
galactose. Intact, this sugar is broken down in the
intestines by bacteria and the results are gas, bloating,
and intestinal distress.
Milk contains powerful hormones. Rates of sexual maturity in
children are astounding endocrinologists and behavioral
psychologists. A recent study revealed that eighty percent
of nine-year-old African-American girls have developing
breasts.
Children are becoming overweight at an early age. By eating
high caloric food with growth hormones and saturated animal
fat, the body has a way of listening to the signals of those
chemical messengers: Grow!
One out of five children has Attention Deficit Disorder
(ADD).
A study in the Journal of Autism (Robert Cade) linked
ADD with the consumption of a milk protein, casomorphin.
Herman Mitchell, an asthma researcher and epidemiologist,
has this comment regarding the shocking Harlem asthma data:
“This is certainly one of the highest rates attributed in
the United States, if not the highest.”
Dairy is a major part of Harlem’s in-school food culture.
That same bad habit has become an addiction of the streets.
The poorest children in America begin their day at schools
with milk and cereal for breakfast. Snack time provides
chocolate milk and cookies. Lunch means macaroni and cheese
or pizza. The casein within the mozzarella cheese and
cheddar insures poor digestion, and sets into motion a
reaction by which the bronchioles of a child’s lungs clog
with mucus.
Here is what happened to one very famous American who lived
and died by the milk mustache. Flo Jo choked on her body
fluids, dying from an asthma attack. Her autopsy:
http://notmilk.
How many more generations of cluelessness will it take?
How many more asthma attacks will kill the nation’s
poorest children who continue to eat a deadly poison?
Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.